It Can't Rain All The Time
by devilishblacksheep
Summary: Basically a rehashing of Quentin's interrogation plus some extra stuff to make it interesting. Swearing, violence, angst...it's all good. [movie]
1. The Interrogation

**Another Punisher fic; what can I say, I liked the movie. This one takes place during the movie, when Quentin is trying to get Dave to tell him where Frank is. No reason for doing it; I just got an idea, and the darn thing won't leave me alone.**

**I don't own _The Punisher_, or any of the characters. I'm not making anything off of this; it is merely for my own amusement. The quotes may not be quite right; it's been a while since I saw the movie. However, due to my penchant for accuracy, I'll try to get them as close as I can. The title and the last line are a reference to _The Crow_; I don't own that either, I just like the quote.**

_It Can't Rain All The Time…_

As the man entered the room, Dave knew there was going to be trouble. Generally, a guy with two goons was not an indicator of good things. Especially when the guy looked like he meant business. "Where's Castle?"

Dave kept silent, hoping Bumpo would too. He knew he might regret this later, but he wasn't about to give Castle away; after all, Castle had stood up for him, which no one else had ever bothered to do. Dave owed him a favor.

The man looked at them, annoyed at their silence. "Frank Castle, who lives here." He turned to Bumpo. "I asked you a question, fat man."

Dave couldn't keep quiet. Why did people always have to do that, pick on people who couldn't fight back? He took a deep breath, prepping for the anticipated repercussions, and said, "Leave him alone." The man turned his attention on Dave. "Then I'll ask you. Where's Castle?"

Dave shifted in nervousness. This was going to end badly, he just knew it. After growing up with an abusive father, he had a radar for these kinds of things. The only thing he could do was try to keep the guy from finding Castle. No matter what it took. "He's not here," he said.

"Really?" The man asked, obviously not believing him. "Are you sure?"

_I'm not saying shit,_ Dave thought to himself. But apparently he had been thinking out loud, because the man said, "What did you say? Hmm? I'm having trouble hearing you." _Dammit. I'm just making this worse, _he thought. He looked down at the ground, avoiding the man's gaze. "I said, 'I'm not saying shit.'"

The man obviously didn't like his answer, and was quickly losing patience with him. "I don't want you to say shit. I want you to answer me."

Dave kept quiet. Maybe if he didn't say anything the man would leave…yeah right. And maybe Bumpo would grow some balls and go Tae-Kwon Do on this guy's ass. This guy was one of the people who worked for Howard Saint; there was no way in hell he would decide to leave now, especially without any information on Castle.

"You don't want to say anything about anything you might know?" Dave continued his silence. The man tried a different approach. "Maybe we should get to know each other a little better." He walked over to the far wall, causing Dave to slouch down further in his chair. What the hell was he doing now? He hoped the guy wouldn't find the elevator; that would only make things worse. He came back to where Dave was sitting, holding a pair of pliers. Dave stared at them in shock. _I'll give you three guesses as to what the fuck he's going to use those for, and the first two don't count. Dammit…_

"What's your name?" The man asked, as casually as if this was a normal conversation.

"Dave…" he said, wondering where the conversation was headed.

"You go to school around here?" _What's with the questions? If he's going to use the pliers, why doesn't he just get it over with? _He shook his head in response to the question.

"You don't go to school?"

"No. No, I dropped out," Dave said quietly. _All I have to do is go along with it. Eyes on the ground, you know the drill. It won't be too bad if I just don't piss him off any more…right?_

"You dropped out?" Dave nodded. "You're not doing drugs, are you?" This came out almost accusingly.

"Not right now…" _Although I really wish I was,_ he thought to himself. _At least then I might not be scared out of my fucking mind!_ He still refused to look at the man. As long as he didn't look at him, he would be able to keep this up. As long as he didn't look, he could keep the guy from finding Castle.

"And what are you doing with these...things? What is it?" The man gestured at his own face, indicating Dave's numerous facial piercings.

He brought his eyes up to look at the man briefly. Was he stupid? Or was he just baiting him, waiting for Dave to let something slip? "Piercings…"

"Piercings. Did it hurt when you did that?" He sounded concerned, but Dave knew better. It was a ploy to try to get him to think they were friends so he would tell him something. Wasn't going to happen. Dave was well-versed in this kind of thing; it would take more than false friendship for him to betray Castle. He shook his head. "Not really."

"You like that? When it hurts a little bit?"

What? Did he seriously think Dave was a masochist? God, no. Not after what he had been through growing up. Sure, he had a high tolerance for pain, but that was a survival thing, not 'cause he actually enjoyed it. What kind of sick fuck was this guy? Dave shook his head.

The guy pointed at Dave's eyebrow ring, a little too close, if you asked him. "That's a special one there, isn't it? Is that your favorite? That's hard to get."

Dave sunk further back in his chair, turning his head to get away from the hand fondling his eyebrow ring. God, this was awkward. "Yeah," he said, hoping it would make the guy move his hand. Why was he so interested in his piercings? He looked in the guy's other hand, remembering the pliers that he held.

As the hand holding the pliers slowly moved towards his face, Dave realized what was going to happen. _Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. Please no._ "Answer my question."

"No."

"Come here." The pliers advanced further, and Dave squirmed to try to escape it, even though he knew it was a lost cause. "No!" He yelled, but in spite of his protests the pliers closed on the piercing the man had been so focused on a few seconds ago. Dave continued to squirm, trying to get away, even though he knew there was no escaping. The grunts at the door would never let him by, and if he did manage to get away they would only try to get Bumpo to tell them, and he wasn't as good as Dave at keeping secrets. So he would just have to accept this.

The man turned to Bumpo. "Your friend is about to have a very bad day. You can save him by talking." Dave stared at Bumpo, willing him to keep quiet. _Shut up, Bumpo. Don't say a damn thing. I've got this; don't fuck it up. We can get through this if you just STAY QUIET._

And, miraculously, he did. "It doesn't have to be this way," the man said, attempting to guilt Bumpo into saying something. But he didn't; for once he stayed quiet, giving Dave an apologetic look and resuming his examination of the floor.

The man shifted his attention back to Dave. "You think you know about pain, boy?" He said contemptuously. "What do you know about pain?" _Enough to know I'm not gonna give in, no matter how much it hurts,_ Dave thought. The man pulled, and Dave screamed, pushing back into the chair in a useless attempt to escape the pain. He couldn't help it; when the man pulled, Dave was pushed beyond rational thought, his only thought being how to make it stop. The ring pulled through his flesh, ripping it open and leaving a gash that oozed blood. After it was out, he curled up as much as he could, gasping and sobbing in a combination of pain and frustration at his inability to fight back, holding his forehead and reminding himself why he was in this position. He resumed his struggling when it became evident that the man was not done with him. "That's okay. That's okay," the man said, as if it would excuse what he had done.

He went back to the veiled threats. "Are you going to tell me? Dave? Dave?" The kid in question was still squirming, still unwilling to accept that there was no escape. "Are you going to tell me?" He asked again.

"No!" Dave cried, although he was absolutely terrified, if he was truly honest with himself. More scared than he had ever been during his father's drunken rages. Sure, his father had broken a few bones on occasion, but Dave had accepted that as normal. He had thought that, by leaving home, he had finally broken from that, but here he was, being menaced by a man with a pair of pliers. If he wasn't so terrified he might have laughed. But this was no laughing matter; a man's life was on the line, and it wasn't his. He didn't want to die, but he knew he was expendable; Castle was doing good work, even though his means were dubious, and who was Dave to get in the way of that? Plus, Castle was one of them, one of the loners who didn't fit in to society. They had to stick together.

"Why don't we explore the true meaning of pain?" The man said derisively, bringing the pliers to the piercing in Dave's nose. "Stop," Dave pleaded, moving away from the pliers and putting his hands out in front of his face. But the man would not give up, instead pushing Dave's hands out of the way and grabbing his chin, pulling it into a position where he could more easily remove the piercing. "Come here, Dave." Dave refused, pulling away. "Come on, come on. You want to talk to me?" The pliers had closed on the piercing, and threatened to pull if Dave continued to refuse. "No!"

"You can talk to me. Talk to me, Dave." Dave kept quiet, still trying in vain to escape the pliers' grip. The man pulled, and the ring was slowly pulled out, causing Dave to scream again. The blood flowed from the new wound, joining the blood from the first.

The pattern continued, the man trying to coerce Dave into giving Frank up and Dave refusing, resulting in one piercing after another being forcibly removed. The one in the left ear was removed, then the right ear, then the lip piercings, one by one, until there were no more and Dave was reduced to a shivering, bloody mess, sitting in the chair and staring vacantly ahead. This was the defense mechanism that had allowed him to get through childhood relatively unharmed; when his father beat on him, after a while he just shut down, which made it a lot less fun for his father, since he wasn't fighting back. However, this tactic hadn't worked on this guy, no matter how noncombatant Dave became. It had actually worked a little too well on Dave himself; he was now in some kind of self-induced coma, staring vacantly ahead and not responding when Bumpo got up to check on him except to flinch when Bumpo touched him.

Joan and Castle rose out of the floor on the elevator installed in the floor, with Joan supporting most of Castle's weight, since he still seemed incapable of doing it himself. "Look what they did to him," Bumpo lamented. Castle took a quick glance at Dave, and lurched out of the room, grabbing the blade from a papercutter on the way out, to find the guys responsible. Joan walked over to where Dave sat, after making sure Castle wasn't going to fall over, and looked him over. His face was covered in blood, running in tracks down his face and neck from the various holes that had been ripped through. She grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a standing position, trying to ignore his groans and flinching. She pulled him over to a chair near the sink, where she could clean up most of the blood. With careful strokes she cleaned him up, trying not to freak him out too much. She had never seen him this bad before. Sure, he usually tried to avoid direct eye contact, and most physical contact, for that matter, but he wasn't usually this jumpy. She cursed the man who had done this to her friend, hoping that he would see justice.

Castle returned after a few minutes, a little calmer. He walked over to Dave, who seemed to have recovered a little bit. "They tried to make me talk. I gave 'em nothin'," he slurred. He was still a little out of it, but he was better than before.

His words seemed to frustrate Castle. "You don't know me. You don't owe me anything. Why are you so ready to die for me?"

Dave gave him a puzzled look. Didn't he understand? "You're one of us. You're family."

Castle pulled him to a standing position, eliciting another flinch from Dave. He stared at him for a minute, while Dave averted his eyes to the floor. _No reason not to be careful,_ he thought through the haze "Get him to a hospital," Castle said, moving him to a position where Bumpo could grab him before he fell over; Castle was the only thing keeping Dave upright at the moment.

"Come on, Champ," said Bumpo encouragingly, putting an arm around Dave to keep him standing. "They'll get you all fixed up."

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"Stop that." Bumpo had managed to catch Dave picking at his lip for the third time on their ride from the apartment building to the hospital. He made a motion to swat Dave's hand away from his mouth, but when Dave flinched, he stopped, immediately apologizing. "Sorry, man. Just – don't do that, okay? You'll only make it worse."

Dave nodded, and was quiet for a few minutes, at which point he started fidgeting. He normally couldn't sit still for extended periods of time, a residual effect from his father's abuse, but recent events had made him even more nervous than usual. He began picking at the scabs forming on his left ear, periodically glancing at Bumpo to see if he knew what he was doing. Eventually Bumpo caught on, reaching over to pull Dave's bloodstained hand away from his face despite his protests.

"Just sit on your hands, or something, alright? At least until we get to the hospital." Dave obediently complied, and for the rest of the ride Bumpo talked animatedly, trying to get Dave's mind off of recent events.

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Bumpo and Dave stumbled into the emergency room, staggering over to the wall of chairs and getting Dave situated before he managed to slide to the floor. "Okay, now stay here. I'm going to go talk to a doctor to get you looked at." Dave laughed to himself. _I really don't think I'm in much of a position to go anywhere, even if I wanted to._ He closed his eyes, getting a few minutes of sleep before he was shaken awake by Bumpo. _Just leave me alone…I'll be fine, I promise. I just want to sleep…_He mumbled something similar out loud, but was ignored. "You gotta stay awake, man," said Bumpo. "You lost a lot of blood, and they want to make sure you're okay. A doctor is here to take a look at you." He pulled Dave back up to a standing position, and walked with him to the room the doctor went into.

Once there, they got Dave to sit down on the table, and the doctor looked at his cuts, not asking about how he had gotten them. "You're going to have to have stitches, just to make sure they heal properly," he said. And you're going to have to stay here a few days for observation, to make sure they don't get infected." Dave nodded vaguely. Why couldn't he just go home? He hated hospitals; they smelled funny, and the doctors tended to pry too much. Plus, the food sucked.

The doctor went into a drawer to get the disinfectant and a needle and thread. He disinfected the cuts, getting hisses of pain from Dave, and then sewing the cuts shut, making Dave more nervous from the close contact. Bumpo tried to calm him down, but Dave couldn't stop shaking, eliciting strange looks from the doctor. "He's fine, just nervous. He doesn't like needles," Bumpo assured the doctor, and he left it at that.

Dave was given a room, and the order that he had to stay there for at least a day, to make sure everything was healing properly. His cuts were bandaged up, and he didn't do much other than sit in the room and stare blankly at the television. Occasionally a nurse would come in with a comforting smile and a plate of food, which he choked down, but he never said anything, opting instead to pretend to sleep or to focus intently on whatever slop was placed in front of him. He didn't really want to talk to anyone; almost everyone except Bumpo and Joan caused him to get jumpy, at which point he wouldn't calm down until they had left. Bumpo and Joan would try to get him to talk, but he wouldn't say anything more than a few noncommittal responses every now and again. The episode in Castle's apartment had hurt him more than physically, and so he had to work through the memories the event had triggered. Memories he didn't really want to think about, and hadn't for years except in passing. Memories of nights spent in a closet hiding from his father's alcohol-induced rages. Memories of days spent worrying about his mother, who would greet him in the morning with numerous bruises in a rainbow of colors. Memories of hospital visits, where he had to make up some story about why he had broken his arm for the third time because he was afraid of what would happen if he told the truth. Too many memories.

His friends understood. Joan had gone through a multitude of abusive boyfriends, each one worst than the last, so she had her own scars that enabled her to understand why Dave was behaving the way he was. She didn't like it; she felt that his retraction from the world around him was hurting more than helping, but she accepted it as his own way of healing and, for the most part, let him be. Bumpo, having learned about Dave's childhood in bits and pieces over the past few years when he was feeling especially talkative, understood as well, but was less accepting of his behavior. He would sit in the room for a few hours at a time, endlessly chatting about anything and everything in an effort to get Dave to respond. Occasionally he would get a smile, or a comment, but other than that Dave remained silent.

It wasn't until a few days later that Dave started getting involved again. He smiled more, talked more, and was almost entirely back to his old self. "Can we leave now?" He asked Joan when she came in. "Nothing's infected, I'm off the meds; please? I need a cheeseburger or something. There's only so much crap a guy can take."

Joan smiled, and assured him that he had gotten the OK to be discharged. The three of them left the building, taking a taxi back to the apartment building. "So, are you okay?" Bumpo asked, never being one for tact. "Yeah," Dave said, "I think so." He itched absently at the bandage covering his right eyebrow. "Shit happens; that's life. I'm over it." And he was. They might not have believed him, and he didn't blame them. But he had finally reached a point in his life where he was done being scared, done living constantly in fear of who was going to hurt him next. Whatever life threw at him, he vowed to take it in stride, since it was only temporary. After all, it can't rain all the time, right?


	2. The Aftermath

**Yeah, I know; I thought the last chapter was the end of it too. However, Dave refused to accept that his story was over (yes, the characters in my stories talk to me. Don't like it? Too bad. If they don't talk, I don't write), so I wrote another chapter. This story is more for me anyway, so I really don't care if you like it or not. :P**

Dave talked in his sleep. Not actual sentences, or even words; not really. Occasionally a word would slip out, something like "no" or "don't," but usually it was just indecipherable muttering. Usually it wasn't too bad; or, at least, it was quiet enough that Bumpo could just ignore the sounds radiating through the thin walls of the apartment into his room. But for the past few days, ever since Dave came back from the hospital, it had gotten worse.

He would be woken from a sound sleep to whimpering and begging from the next room, and would toss and turn for hours, torn between waking his friend from his nightmare so he could sleep and the response he knew he would get from Dave if he did; the initial look of fear upon waking followed by the burying of emotion and the subsequent demand that Bumpo leave him alone. No, he didn't want to face that again. He rolled over, pulled the pillow over his head to shut out the noises as much as he could, and tried to fall asleep.

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The next morning, Dave and Bumpo went to the diner where Joan worked, their usual morning routine. Nothing was said about the previous night. They sat down at the counter, and were immediately greeted with steaming cups of coffee and stacks of blueberry pancakes. Dave grinned, pleased with the new development. Bumpo glanced at him quickly; he looked like he hadn't slept in a week, despite his attempts to seem cheery. He sighed to himself. "What?" Dave asked around a mouthful of pancake.

Bumpo shook his head, digging into his own breakfast to avoid answering. Dave shrugged and returned his attention to his food, looking up again when Joan came back over to the counter. "So, how's the food?" She always asked this; it too was part of the routine. Both Bumpo and Dave nodded and made appreciative noises, signifying that yes, the food was good. Joan looked pleased.

After some friendly chatting, Joan looked around the diner, and, noticing that there were significantly more customers, told Bumpo and Dave that unfortunately she had to get back to work. They nodded, and Dave got up to leave. Bumpo stayed seated, and upon seeing Joan's raised eyebrows, he sighed and began to speak, quietly, so as not to bring attention to it. "Umm, listen. Dave's been having these…dreams, and since he won't tell me what's going on, I figure maybe you could find out…? I mean, he kinda shares more around you, so…I don't know."

Joan's eyebrows rose further. "What kind of dreams?"

"Umm, I don't know, like I said, he's not one for sharing. But they sound pretty bad; he mutters to himself, and they've been getting worse since he got released from the hospital."

Joan was hesitant about agreeing to Bumpo's proposition. Sure, Dave was her friend, and if he was having problems she wanted to help out as much as she could. But she wasn't sure how he would respond if she tried to talk to him about whatever it was he was dreaming about. Typically, if things got to be more than he could deal with he would shut down, and since he had just recovered from one of those things, she didn't want to aggravate the problem. If he was having nightmares, though, he must not have recovered as fully as he had led them to believe. So maybe it would be a good thing if she did this. She nodded. "Yeah, sure." She paused for a minute. "But I can't just randomly ask him about it. Wait until tonight, and if he starts having nightmares again, call me. I'll come over and talk to him when he wakes up."

Bumpo nodded, obviously relieved. "Okay."

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That night, Dave dreamt again. The same dream he had been having almost every night since Quentin Glass had shown up in Castle's apartment. His dreams weren't about that; he had stopped having those after the first night in the hospital. The dreams he had now were of earlier times, events he tried to suppress when he was awake.

Bumpo woke up, hearing the same noises he had been hearing for the past few days. This time, he got up. He tiptoed to Dave's room and peeked in, seeing Dave's sleeping form tossing and turning, muttering something to himself over and over. Bumpo left the room, this time traveling to the kitchen, where the phone was. He quickly called Joan's number, and paced the small kitchen until she picked up.

"Hullo?" she asked, obviously still half asleep.

"It's Bumpo. Dave's having his dreams again."

Joan seemed to wake up a little more. "Okay; I'll be right over."

A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, and Bumpo answered it. It was Joan. He let her in, and led her to Dave's room, where he was still asleep and in the grips of a nightmare. She motioned Bumpo to leave, and pulled a chair over to the bed. She sat down, and waited.

After a few minutes of sitting in the chair waiting, Dave still hadn't woken up. If anything, his dream had only gotten worse; he was whimpering now, and every so often she could make out a "no," "don't," or "please," usually in close proximity to one another. She was going to have to wake him up; she couldn't stand to watch this play out any longer. She reached over and shook his shoulder, but no response. She shook harder. "Dave, wake up. Come on, wake up, Dave." After a few minutes, he did, sitting straight up and looking at her, naked fear in his eyes.

"Dave, it's Joan; it's okay."

He blinked a few times, then, realizing where he was, he visibly relaxed. The blanket had slid down when he sat up, revealing strange circular scars scattered across his torso. Upon further inspection, Joan was horrified to realize that they were burn marks. Dave looked up at her, then followed her gaze to the reason for her silence, immediately pulling the blanket up to hide the offending marks, unable to meet her eyes.

"What…?" Joan was unable to settle on what to ask. She had meant to ask what he was dreaming about, but his reaction when she woke him up was enough to cause her to have second thoughts. Now she had more questions than before, and no way to tactfully ask them.

Dave looked up at her, unsure of what to do. What was Joan doing in his room? He chewed his lip nervously, opening one of the sutures and making it bleed. He swore silently to himself; why couldn't he just leave it alone? It wasn't the first time he had accidentally reopened one of the holes; when he was in the hospital he had done it a few times, to the frustration of the nurses. He waited for Joan to say something, knowing she couldn't help but make an effort to fill any awkward silence. He wasn't disappointed.

"So, what were you dreaming about?" Dave was grateful that was the question she asked. Both questions were hard ones to answer, but he wasn't sure what he would say if she asked the other obvious one. "Umm, stuff. Obviously." He laughed nervously. Her leveled gaze told him that his answer wasn't good enough. "Can we maybe talk about this later?" He started fidgeting, causing the blanket to slip a little. He pulled it back up, putting his arms around his knees to keep it there.

"No, I want to talk about this now. I think it would be better to talk about it now, actually."

"Why are you in my room? This is my room; you're not supposed to be in here without my permission." Dave tried to put a little force into his words, hoping she would drop it. Unfortunately for him, Joan didn't.

"Bumpo let me in. He actually told me to come. He's worried about you, Dave; he said you've been having these nightmares, and to tell you the truth, this morning you looked like you haven't slept in a week. So what's going on? Bumpo may be willing to overlook things, but I'm not letting you off the hook."

Dave sighed. He _really_ didn't want to talk about this. He was okay if he didn't think about it; it was only a problem when he fell asleep, so he had been doing as little of that as he could. He was jumpier than normal as a result, since he remembered his dreams more vividly when they came, but he had been trying to hide it as well as he could. He had hid it from Bumpo pretty well, since he was about as observant as a tree, but Joan was harder to hide things from; she had a way of reading people so it was as if she already knew what you were thinking about. She never actually did, but by the time you realized that you had already blurted it out, so by then it was too late to hold back. "I'm fine, really. It was just a bad dream, nothing to worry about. Promise."

Joan kept looking at him, unconvinced. "You have two choices. Either you tell me about your dream or you tell me about the marks you're trying so hard to prevent me from seeing. I have a feeling it's the same thing, but you can pick how you tell it." Her voice told him that he didn't have a choice; she wasn't going to leave until he spilled.

Dave gave one more last-ditch effort to avoid sharing. "No. It doesn't matter, really. Just go home; you're wasting your time. Bumpo doesn't know what he's talking about."

"I kind of doubt that. He said you were mumbling in your sleep and you actually were keeping him awake. Bumpo may be a bit of a worrywart, but this time I think he has a point."

Dave sighed again, then nodded. "Okay. Um…my dad, he liked to drink. A lot. And when he drank, he got violent. And one of his favorite things to do when he was drunk was to take one of the cigars he was constantly smoking and, well, you can probably guess what he did with them." Joan nodded. Dave had let go of the blanket, figuring it was pointless to hide the scars from her now. He still had his arms around his knees, but it was more because he was comfortable in that position than that he was trying to hide something. He put his chin on his knees and looked at his feet, waiting for her response.

"And that's what you're dreaming about?"

Dave looked apologetic. "That and other things…he did a lot of shit to my mom and me. None of it up for any 'best parenting' awards. I guess when the guy who was sent to kill Castle showed up, and, you know, it kinda brought it all up again."

"So, are you okay now?"

"Yeah. I was okay before, I swear. I just need to get past this." Joan gave him a doubting look. "I'm fine, really. I got through it before, I'll get through it again. Just tell Bumpo to give it some time." He shrugged. "Maybe…a week?"

Joan nodded. "I believe you. I'll tell him."

Dave gave her a grateful smile. Joan was really understanding. It was cool; before he met Joan and Bumpo he hadn't had any real friends, people who would just let him be. It was a good change. They never asked him to be anything more than himself, which in and of itself was more than he could handle some days. As Joan left the room, Dave lay back down, pulled the blankets back up, rolled over, and within minutes was asleep. He had no dreams for the rest of the night.

**I swear, this is the end of it. If you want to review, it would be appreciated, since I always like to hear what you guys think of what I write. But don't feel like you have to; like I said, this one was more for me than anything else; I was disappointed that they never really explained why Dave seemed so screwed up, so this is just me trying to fill in the blanks. Granted, Dave wasn't a main character, so it really didn't matter, but that's not the point.**


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